Showing the Work: On Frederick Wiseman Subject Marty Walsh, Now the Biden Administration’s Secretary of Labor
If you live outside New England, and if you saw the movie, Frederick Wiseman’s City Hall (2020) was probably your introduction to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, recently nominated to serve as Secretary of Labor in the Biden administration. And it’s a sustained introduction at that. Onscreen for about 45 of the film’s 272 minutes, Walsh is the living center of City Hall’s structure. Wiseman returns to his prepared remarks and public appearances like a buffer between less formal scenes of office talk and offsite labor, framing the mayor kind of like the loudspeaker in M*A*S*H (1970)—that is, if it had […]
by Jake Mulligan on Feb 10, 2021